What Makes A Running City?

Runners are known to debate which city id the best for running: which has the best trails, running traditions, races, clubs, atmosphere. Rather than argue about it, I decided to study it as part of my graduate studies in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Iowa.

In order to compare one city to another, I tallied the number of marathon finishers for more than 516 cities across the U.S. -- a total of almost 300,000 people -- recording each finisher's age, gender, time, and residence. The map above shows how American states compare in terms of the number of resident marathoners they had in 2006 relative to their overall population.

The values ranged tremendously from state to state. Hawaii had 3.957 marathon runners per thousand, the highest value, while West Virginia had the lowest with 0.2366 runners per thousand. Utah (3.53), Minnesota (2.74), Vermont (2.33) and Colorado (1.71) rounded out the top five states. Mississippi (0.28), Louisiana (0.32), Kentucky (0.46) and Alabama (0.46) had the lowest percentage of marathon runners behind West Virginia. While these numbers may seem low, only the number of marathoner finishers was recorded for comparison. Compared to the running community as a whole, marathons represent 5 percent of the running population across state and city lines. If the percentage for marathon runners as part of the running community is translated to the entire country, then, in Hawaii, for example, 80 out of 1,000 citizens could be a runner.

More importantly, when analyzing the percentage of marathon runners, the specific value is not as crucial as the comparison between states, which shows interesting patterns. The states with the lowest percentage of marathoners in the population were all in the southeast. Meanwhile, states with the highest percentages of runner were in several different categories: Midwest (Minnesota), Rockies (Utah) and New England (Vermont). Th e states with the highest percentages of marathon runners occur across different patterns of climate and urban character and represent different ways of life for their residents.

In addition to analysis at the state level, I made comparisons at the city level. The following table shows the top 10 cities with a city population greater than 100,000 in terms of the percentage of marathon residents, as well as the bottom 10 cities.

I found tremendous variation across the 516 cities analyzed, which indicated that there must be something that distinguishes one city from another. What makes certain cities more attractive to runners?

Comparing the number of marathon residents to the characteristics of the cities produced unexpected results. The first element one might think attracts runners is the amount of parkland in the city. However, it was found that there is, in fact, no relationship between the acres of parkland and the percentage of city residents that were marathoners. Likewise, density -- the number of people living per square mile -- had no correlation to the percentage of runners in a city, as both dense and sprawling cities had similar percentages of marathon residents.

As a result, I looked at dozens of other city characteristics in the U.S. census. In the end, the variable that showed the greatest correlation to the number of marathon finishers was related to the type of workers in a city. Using 2000 census information, cities with a high percentage of residents working in the management, professional and related occupations had high percentage of resident marathoners. When determining the best running cities, it appears that the economic health of the city may be more important than any other factor.

In addition to comparing which cities had a higher percentage of marathon residents, I compared the average time of resident marathon finishers across city boundaries. Looking at cities with more than 100 finishers, the cities with the 10 fastest and slowest times are posted below. The most interesting observation is that all of the slowest cities are California cities. Lower average times could be the result of a presence of elite athletes but also could mean that entry level runners are not participating from these areas. Cities in California with extremely slow average times may be the result of more entry level runners than other parts of the country.

More study is necessary to make any additional conclusions on what makes a city attractive to runners, comparing, for example, participation and times to running club membership, number of races or miles of traffic-free trails in these cities. But, this initial study reveals where you might be more likely to find a training partner for your next marathon, and where you'd find a training group who could push you.

Aaron Ladd is a graduate student in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Iowa and a volunteer assistant coach for the women's track and field team. Aaron also works as an online coach, is a two-time marathon finisher and active trail runner in Iowa.

Please see Page 2 for a list of the cities with the top (and bottom) number of marathon finishers.

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